[WikiEN-l] How to start a viable competitor to Wikipedia?

[Ray Saintonge]

On 04/07/11 2:29 PM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 7 April 2011 21:56, MuZemike<muzemike at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Perhaps I'm missing the point, but isn't that what we have been doing so
>> far (i.e. with all the other sister Wikimedia projects)?
> Yes, but also other niches Wikipedia leaves. Wikia, for example,
> started to form wikis of any sort, but has rapidly taken over the
> niche of fansite wikis.
>
An who can complain about that?

The sister projects began by filling in important niches. The first, 
Meta, provided a way in which we discuss activities and ideas about 
ourselves and policy that was not inherently encyclopedic.  Wiktionary 
was a response to "Wikipedia is not a dictionary." etc. A fork could 
easily start with copied material which from that moment would evolve 
differently. They may choose to abandon NPOV.  Having several sites that 
freely and independently do this would in fact put our own NPOV in a 
broader perspective.  Another may choose to be more aggressive in the 
treatment of copyright.  They would assume the risks at a level which 
makes them comfortable, but in the longer term we too would benefit from 
their efforts to free data.

They need to be willing limit the growth of their projects to match 
their funding. A project that tries to duplicate everything on Wikipedia 
is dooming itself to starvation. Subject specialization is the most 
evident criterion for this. From the Wikipedia side we need to link to 
these projects for alternative views. They are not our enemies.

Ec